“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Lest I give an inaccurate picture of my wife, however, let me add that she combines instances of that seeming intransigence with a profound intuitive innocence before nature (and thus All That Is), and with a great literal acceptance of nature’s manifestations and of her own being and creations within that framework. Although she’s not entirely in agreement with me on this point, I think that essentially Jane is a mystic—not an easy thing to be in our extroverted, materialistic society, for it represents a way of life that’s little understood these days. It’s a role she’s chosen for many reasons. Mysticism is still overwhelmingly regarded as a profoundly religious expression, and one that’s hardly practical, but in my opinion neither of those situations applies to Jane. Her “mystical way” is reinforced by a strongly secretive characteristic that’s usually belied by her seemingly outgoing character and behavior. It took me a long time to realize this. I also had to learn that her literal cast of mind grows directly out of her mysticism, and that because it does, she can be quite impulsive. There’s nothing halfway about Jane. She’s intensely loyal. She’s a very perceptive person with many abilities, a fine intelligence, and an excellent critical sense. Whatever reservations she shows—her conscious inhibition of impulses, for example—are learned devices that are literally protective in nature. I’ve certainly found her particular combination of attributes to be unique, and I don’t think she’d be able to express the Seth material as she does without them. Throughout these essays I hope to add many insights into her character. For now, though, I present what I have to work with from the saddest, most mournful Sumari song she’s ever created and sung. The tape goes into our files, although I’d love to know what she said on the rest of it….

Jane’s hearing is much improved after treatment with decongestants and a pair of minor operations in which tiny drainage tubes were inserted through her eardrums—the procedure is called surery—to relieve internal blockage. Jane’s thyroid gland, Dr. Mandali finally told her, has simply ceased functioning, so the doctor has begun a program of cautiously rejuvenating my wife’s endocrine system, and thus all of her bodily processes, with a synthetic thyroid hormone in pill form (a low 50 micrograms to start). Jane is to take these pills for the rest of her life. At least that’s the current prognosis. Her double vision is not as severe and is supposed to keep improving as the hormone takes effect. Dr. Mandali has prescribed drops to keep Jane’s eyes lubricated, and a liquid salicylate medication (as a substitute for aspirin) to control joint pain and inflammation. Both of these products are taken four times a day. The increased glandular activity is also expected to have some beneficial effects upon Jane’s arthritis, and possibly upon her anemia (a condition that often accompanies arthritis). I asked that she be tested for food allergies, since I’d read that reactions to various foods and additives can trigger arthritis, but Dr. Mandali said that “if Jane is allergic she (Jane) would know it”—a position I came to most thoroughly disagree with. But usually, I thought, the trouble with having something diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis is that not only do you have it when you go into the hospital, but when you leave it. Such is the state of the art of medicine in this case, unfortunately.

Seth uses the term “value fulfillment,” as in the title of this book, to imply life’s greater values and characteristics—that is, we are alive not only to continue, to insure life’s existence, but to add to the very quality of life itself.

We do not just receive the torch of life and pass it on as one Olympic runner does to another, but we each add to that living torch or flame a power, a meaning, a quality that is uniquely our own. We do this as individuals, as members of the family, the community, and members of the species. Whenever that flame shows signs of dimming, of losing rather than gaining potential energy and desire, then danger signals appear everywhere. They show up as wars and social disorders on national scales, and as household crises, as illnesses (pause), as calamities on personal levels as well.

When we hesitate, hold back, falter, when we hold back energy in the hopes of saving it, when we allow fear rather than trust to guide our activities, when the quality of our lives becomes less than we know it should be—then warnings flash. (Long pause.) One crisis after another may arise to gain our attention. This has happened in many people’s lives—and so recently the same kind of warning recently appeared in my own life.

“Value fulfillment?” I thought. “What the hell am I letting myself in for? And how have the events of my life come to such a turn?” This was, of course, as anyone familiar with hospitals knows, only the beginning. There were numberless blood tests. I also had to be lifted onto and off the bed, onto and off the portable commode.

(8:21.) In this book, Seth does discuss to some degree the nature of certain illnesses as they apply to individual life and genetic survival. And there I lay in the hospital for a full month, with physical survival uppermost in my mind—hardly a coincidence. They told me that my thyroid gland was very underactive, and that I had arthritis. They X-rayed my hands but not my knees. One of the blood tests showed that I was slightly anemic. But other tests and X-rays revealed that I had sound lungs—in spite of my smoking—a good heart and stomach and other organs. I laughed.

This is a good place to explain that while Jane was in the hospital neither of us ever made any attempt to “convert” the people there—doctors, nurses, technicians, say—to a belief in the Seth material. Beyond saying that Jane was a writer and that I was an artist, we told no one of our interests in life. We weren’t there to impose our beliefs upon anyone else. We’d made the conscious, joint decision during a time of crisis to seek certain kinds of help from skilled practitioners in the medical field, and we were willing to learn from them, even if those people were pretty certain to have belief systems very different from ours. (Well, I should add with a touch of a smile, at least we were more willing to learn in the beginning!)